Macintosh Name Tables

André G. Isaak
André G. Isaak Posts: 634
in Font Technology
I was wondering if there is any Macintosh software which actually depends on the presence of Macintosh name tables in a font — AFAICT, macOS always falls back on the windows name table entry if no Macintosh entry is present, but I’m wondering if leaving out the mac name table entries might cause problems.

(The reason I want to eliminate the mac name tables is because it doesn't seem to be possible to include multi-script text in the copyright string when mac names are included).

TIA,
André

Comments

  • Dave Crossland
    Dave Crossland Posts: 1,431
    Older versions of MS Word that are still in use need them, so I'm still including them in Google Fonts requirements checker "font bakery" 
  • André G. Isaak
    André G. Isaak Posts: 634
    I don't have access to any older versions of word at the moment. Do you think it would be safe to assume that that requirement only applies to the actual font names and not to things like the copyright notice (which I don't think word displays) ?

    It's really only the copyright field that I care about since that what is displayed in the Macintosh’s ‘get info’ box.
  • Dave Crossland
    Dave Crossland Posts: 1,431
    Yeah I am confident that you could drop the nameID 0 (copyright) from the macOS IDs without a problem
  • André G. Isaak
    André G. Isaak Posts: 634
    Thanks!
  • Adam Twardoch
    Adam Twardoch Posts: 515
    Predefined instances in variable fonts on macOS Sierra and older need their names in the PID.EID=1.0 slots, because the code that reads GX varations in macOS is old. 
  • Dave Crossland
    Dave Crossland Posts: 1,431
    Oh wow, great tip Adam!
  • SiDaniels
    SiDaniels Posts: 277
    Recently hit an issue with Adobe XD needing them. Issue has been reported to Adobe. 

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